


It Never Gets Easier

by KerriLovegood



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-19
Updated: 2017-12-19
Packaged: 2019-02-16 21:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13062618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KerriLovegood/pseuds/KerriLovegood
Summary: Spoilers for The Last Jedi. Slight canon alteration.Poe comes to Leia's quarters shortly after the death of Paige Tico and other pilots. He is angry and overwhelmed, and she is running on empty when it comes to hope after a lifetime of fighting. They speak about hard truths and their belief in each other.





	It Never Gets Easier

**Author's Note:**

> Includes some material/references/additions to the Shattered Empire comics.  
> Like some others I've seen online, I wasn't happy with Poe's characterization in The Last Jedi, and decided to try to give my hand at him and Leia, who have a dynamic I wish was expanded upon in a less condescending and antagonistic way. 
> 
> There are some slight alterations, such as Poe having not been demoted.

General Organa rarely got a moment alone. She didn’t always like the silence much, never knowing what to do with herself beyond plan: in the days of the New Republic, she planned meetings and laws and service efforts; now, she was once again filling the role she had at 19, mapping out battles and holding lives in her hands. 

 

          It never got easier. But it got familiar. 

 

         She had retreated to her quarters to notify the next of kin of those brave pilots from the assault earlier. Han had said once, hands rubbing deep circles in her back, that it didn’t always have to be her job to do this. She had turned to hold his gaze, and stated “Yes, it does.” 

 

Leaning against the window, watching reality bend and glow around her, she orated the messages to her computer. Some had large families on backwater worlds and some had none at all, but had listed non-blood relatives in their personnel files. It felt wrong to not know the story of these relationships when she was the messenger of their ending. 

 

One of them - Paige Tico, the woman who had managed to still drop her payload even as it meant taking herself with them - her only mentioned family member worked in Maintenance. Dameron had been blinking the tears out of his eyes when he told her, jaw clenched, that he would take care of that one himself.

 

There were so many names she wanted to remember, but too many more than she ever could. She had overseen the building of a monument to the lives lost at Alderaan on Hosnian Prime decades before. Now Hosnian Prime had met the same fate, along with all the planets in its system. 

 

The years went on, and the weapons got deadlier. Maybe the Jedi had had a good idea with their lightsabers; they had to confront the consequences of all of their actions on the battlefield. 

 

Finally tearing herself away from the window and the blue glow of hyperspace, she sat down at the nearby table and allowed herself a sigh. Calling those lost  heroes had always felt like something of an insult. Grief was something she never knew how to perform, though it sat heavy in her heart.

 

Pushing her datapad across the table from her, as if that could banish its contents from her mind, she crossed her hands in front of her. She allowed the thought to cross her mind: when had she gotten so old? Were her brother’s hands, wherever he was, just as foreign to him these days? Her fingernails were unpainted, fingers themselves barren except for a single ring of Synthstone dotted with emeralds that needed polishing but still caught the light. 

 

Han had asked if she knew how to tell apart Alderaanian Synthstone, because some shadowy trader owed him a large sum of credits and favors if he had been lying. It had shocked her as he slid it onto her finger, and she had turned her hand back and forth, recalling what her planet had looked like from far off. The valleys had slid just as elegantly into the snowy peaks as the stones on her hand did to each other.   
  
She had asked Han if Corellians used rings to propose. He had not let go of her hand, and his eyes were bright as he smiled at her, so different than the usual sly twist of his mouth. 

 

“Well,” he had said, voice low with an edge of its usual bravado, “depends if Alderaanians say yes to them.”

 

The memory jerked away rather than faded. It felt like there was something hollowed out in her chest. After the initial pain that had grabbed her and pulled her down as though gravity had new rules, she was left with a more terrifying emptiness. Even when he had left, she could always feel Han, somehow.

 

She rolled her eyes at herself, then reached across the table for the datapad again. Just as she lifted it, there was a knock on her door. It was two knocks, not impatient, that echoed into the room. Mind kicking into speed again, considering what task lied ahead, she stood up, calling out “I’m on my way.”

 

“Nothing to report, General,” the voice replied, a familiar one, slightly sheepish now.

 

“Dameron?” She asked, confused, but before he could reply she added, “Come in, come in. You know my override codes.”

 

The door sprung open nearly immediately after that, as if he had been on edge, waiting for permission. Poe was still in his flight suit, rumpled and grease stained around the middle, as he ran a hand through his hair and it fell into messy waves on his forehead. He looked deflated, a rare state to see him in. Pausing again just inside the doorway, she motioned for him to come to her. If it were under better circumstances, she would have laughed at him, mockingly saluted him for his formality.

 

He paused in front of the table, pacing slightly before planting himself in front of her. He was pulled taut with nervous energy. She studied him calmly, even as he avoided eye contact.

 

“How is the Tico sister?” She asked finally.

 

“She’s…” Poe shook his head, running a hand through his hair again. Glancing out the window, he shrugged slightly and said, “About as well as you’d expect. She’s made of strong stuff. I would have stayed with her as long as she needed me, but...she asked to be alone. She was working when I found her, covered in grease, and got back to it after I left.”

 

Leia nodded sympathetically. “The Resistance has heroes well beyond pilots and soldiers, Poe.” He closed his eyes and nodded once, his own hurt at Paige’s death clouding his face. That was his, and she wouldn’t pry. “It’s good you went.”

 

“These things require a personal touch, General.” She sat back, eyes widening slightly in surprise as she remembered with a jolt her own father telling her the same thing many, many years ago when she was a headstrong teenager. 

 

He attempted a smile, fidgeting slightly in place. The pale blue light made him look washed out, more tired than she had noticed recently.  “You taught me that, ma’am,” he added. “When I was eight.”  
  
“Ah.” She nodded in understanding. That had been the first time she had met him, in the rains of Yavin 4, wearing his mother’s old uniform coat like a robe around his small shoulders. He had been crying for days, Kes had told her, his own voice hollow. They all walked out to that old tree that pulsed with the Force near the now-abandoned Rebel Base. She had let go of Han’s hand once under its thick cover of branches to hug the small boy who quaked with grief and tell him of his mother’s bravery. 

 

Han had stood behind them, holding onto Ben, who was only five and too young to comprehend exactly what was happening. The rain had wet his thick mop of dark hair so it clung to his thin face. His mouth was turned down in a pout, but he said nothing.

 

She studied the man who was now in front of her, wearing his own, hard-earned flight suit but bearing some of the bold features of both his mother and father. He looked on the edge of speech, but then swallowed the words down and took a step closer to her table.

 

“You know, Commander, am I going to be honored with having you at my table?” She asked dryly, nodding to the chair across from her again. 

 

At that, Poe did smile, and lowered himself into the seat. Resting his chin on his hands, he looked pensive, as if trying to find the words. 

 

“What’s really on your mind, Poe?” She asked, leaning forward to look at him. He met her with a hard stare from his brown eyes, unique but with just as fierce of a spark behind them as Shara had had.

 

He breathed deeply. “I’m so angry, General, and I feel like I have no right to be.”

 

“You have to accept your fault in this mission, Poe.” 

 

“No it's-” he dropped his hands and clenched his fist on the table “ it's not that. I have. I do.”

 

“Would you do it differently?” She pressed. Across from her, he looked down at the table, considering. Opening his mouth a few times to speak before changing his mind, she said “The answer doesn't have to be yes.”

 

His eyes shot up from the table too look at her in surprise. “I don't know.”

 

At that, Leia laughed. Harsh and loud, it was something like a bark. She stood up and walked over to a cabinet along the opposite wall, clapping him on the shoulder as she went. Pulling out two glasses, she said over her shoulder “Want a drink?”

 

There was a pause where he said nothing. Turning around to look at him she said “That wasn't sarcasm.”

 

He looked confused but nodded, standing up to carry the glasses over to the table. She pulled out a small bottle of an alcohol he didn't recognize. 

 

Placing it on the table between then as she sat down, he opened it and poured them each a small serving of Amber in the clear glass. She laughed again and said he could pour more, she wouldn't tell anyone. 

 

“I've been saving that bottle for when I finally had family with me again,” she admitted, taking a sip. His face fell slightly, features pained. “Given recent circumstances, I'm afraid I won't be seeing Han or Luke or...or Ben, anytime soon.” 

 

“I’m sorry. “

 

She shook her head, dismissing him. “But I  _ am _ going to have a drink with my son.”

 

Poe’s mouth fell open slightly. “General, I -”

 

“Poe Dameron, did any part of that make you think I want to be called ‘General’ right now?” She chastised him lightly. 

 

He grinned. “No, Leia. Thank you.” 

 

She smiled slightly. “Thank  _ you. _ ” She looked at him fondly for a moment, then continued on. “About what you were saying -- I’d say that not knowing makes you a leader. As soon as you’re entirely sure in your plan is when you start losing people for it. Every leader doubts themselves.”

 

“Even you?” he asked quietly. 

 

“ _ Especially _ me.”

 

Poe shifted in his seat, brows drawn together and eyes distant as he processed what she said. “What I’m so angry about these days is that - we got them! With the Starkiller, I mean, I thought we had the First Order backed into a corner, but now we’re running again. And I’m having a hard time here not feeling like a coward.” 

 

There was a clatter as she placed her glass on the table and cleared her throat. “Cowards force others to fight for them. You’re not a coward.”

 

“When do you stop being strategic and simply become a coward?” He closed his eyes again.

 

“You’d know,” Leia said sternly.

 

“I suppose you’re right. I would.” Poe shifted in his chair. “I suppose what’s really just plaguing me - and I’m sorry for -for the _disrespect_ of it but - it’s this nagging thought that the absolute _hell_ my parents and you and everyone went through -- was it for nothing, Leia?” A muscle was jumping in his jaw, and she wasn’t sure if she’d ever seen his gaze sharper, like something being welded.

 

She stood up again, abruptly, and turned to the window. She placed a hand on the glass.

 

“I’m sorry, that was --” he began, and she heard a scraping noise as he stood up, too.

 

“You’re not out of line, Poe,” she said firmly, not looking away from the vortex of swirling light outside. 

 

He joined her wordlessly, staring out as though searching for the same answers she had begun to allow herself to ponder for the first time in her life. It had never been a clean cut ending. Democracy was easier said than done, she had heard from those alive during the Republic. Yet, they always spoke of it with a gleam in their eyes. At the waning of this New Republic, she wondered if her own eyes held that shine of someone who could not let go of a dream.

 

She had never let herself consider the worst possible scenarios (or the realities), because then she could drown in it. And there was work to do.

 

“Of course it’s worth it to keep fighting,” she said finally, wondering vaguely who had taken that truth away from her brother, why she could not feel him anymore. “Even if we have to will that purpose into being.” She closed her eyes. “The alternative is unbearable.”

 

A story that she had heard and frequently imagined as a child, with varying levels of heroics, came to mind. “My father - the one who raised me - told me about the last days of the Republic. A lot of people fled Coruscant, it was such a bloodbath. But my father went back to the Jedi Temple as it burned. He went looking for survivors when he knew nothing of combat. He wasn’t able to save anyone, and he had to run. But he went on to found the Rebellion.”

 

“As long as there’s any light left, we fight,” he said, understanding. “Even if it’s not immediate.”

 

“Now you’re getting it.” She reached a hand to one of his and squeezed it briefly. He turned to look at her again. 

 

“The light...bursts through in surprising ways,” she said quietly. “I did not imagine it appearing in a defected stormtrooper, or a scavenger from a cosmic junkyard.” She laughed again. “The son of Shara Bey and Kes Dameron,  _ that _ I could have guessed.” 

 

The smile faded from her face quickly. “I can’t help but wonder if our flaw was trying to rebuild what came before. Maybe there’s a future to be had where darkness won’t be able to grow, but I don’t think I can be the one to imagine it.”

 

“There will be a place for you in it,” Poe said, the light from outside seeming to have transformed so a brilliant blue corona framed his features rather than drowned them out. “Not as General, or Princess, but as Leia.”

 

Before she could respond, he hugged her briefly, long enough for her to bring her own hand up to his back. He held her close, admiringly, in a way she had almost forgotten she could be. 

 

Then, he slid away from the window and back to the door from which he entered. “As you said, General” he called, voice stronger, his electric energy returning to him, “we’ve got work to do.”

 

“Commander,” she said, already feeling her mind switching gears, a dozen different plans formulating in front of her. It was enough so that she did not notice just how large her quarters felt when she was alone.

 

With a salute, he stepped out the door and was gone, practically racing down the hallway.


End file.
